


425A

by zuzeca



Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Bargaining, Bittersweet Ending, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Hopeful Ending, Lost Love, Mind Palace, Other, Telepathic Bond, True Love's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 19:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16959723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/pseuds/zuzeca
Summary: “Tell me the way then,” said the woman to the White Bear. “And I’ll seek you out.”All that is raveled may be knit. Eddie learns that sometimes the way back lies beyond mountains of glass, the unkindness of strangers, and a skein soaked in blood.





	425A

**Author's Note:**

> So in the interest of full disclosure, my knowledge of the Venom comics is far from comprehensive, but I was intrigued by the controversy surrounding the current comics run and decided to take a stab at exploring an idea of potential resolution regarding what happened to the symbiote. All with a healthy dose of fairy tale role reversal, shady bargaining, and a good old fashioned true love's kiss.
> 
> Thus, the title, which despite sounding like a very boring form letter, is actually a reference to the [Aarne–Thompson classification system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_systems) for folktales. Type 425A--as seen in such stories as _East of the Sun, West of the Moon_ and _The Black Bull of Norroway_ (both of which had strong thematic influences on this)--is "the search for the lost husband" |D Enjoy.

Eddie learned from the time of his birth that all things come in threes and sevens. Three magical gifts, seven cursed years. Seven deadly sins, three faces of God.

Three pronouns for the self, seven children for the symbiote.

The motel carpet is pocked with stains and cigarette burns, the sheets on the bed translucent as a wedding veil. He sits on the moldering comforter, his other beside him, and listens to the storm rage in the rainsoaked twilight.

His other’s head rests against his thigh, a heavy and square approximation of an animal skull and jaw. A guard dog, they’d called it, a human conceit. Perhaps they think it apt, think that he’s accepted this new role forced upon them by the curse of circumstance. That he would so willingly take up Acteon’s mantle.

Eddie knows better.

This is a curse of a very different sort. A lost beloved. A betrayed husband clothed in the perverted likeness of a wolf.

It fits.

The wind moans around the building. His other stirs fretfully and Eddie strokes its ears, fingers straying down into the black valleys and wrinkles of its bull-like face.

_Seven long years I served for thee…_

Once his other has settled back against his leg, Eddie rests his palm against their forehead and closes his eyes. It’s only here, in the darkness and the static silence of the storm, that Eddie can do this.

The bond between him and the symbiote is not something that Eddie had before taken the time to examine in great detail. Even long after the giddy, enraged madness of those early days together had banked, he hadn’t understood its nature, not really. He’d only known that things were better. He’d only known the burgeoning, steady warmth of _we._

In true, cursed fashion, he’d had to seek aid. To petition a power greater than his own.

 

_“Well, well, little badger,” said the horned god. “I shouldn’t think you’d have thought to pull at those bloody, frayed threads still binding your people to mine.”_

_“I need your help.”_

_“Straight to the point, aren’t we? Big, muscly man who knows just what he wants? I see why they like you.”_

_“There must be a way to bring them back. You must know.”_

_“Perhaps, badger, perhaps. But it won’t be easy. And you forget one thing.”_

_“What’s that?”_

_“There’s always a price.”_

_“I’ll pay it.”_

_“Even if—”_

_“I’ll pay it.”_

 

Eddie doesn’t have the mental prowess of a symbiote. Not of an Asgardian. Not even of a Kree. He’s human to the bone. Human, with human plasticity.

And he can learn.

Years ago Mary, still practically a fumbling child herself, had taken him to a Renaissance fair. In retrospect it had been a pathetic affair. Not much more than a vacant lot, mud rut tracks from rain and weedy grass. They’d passed a woman seated at a spinning wheel and Eddie had stopped to watch, captivated by the movement. Merino, she’d said. He’d watched the amorphous stormcloud of wool condense itself into dark yarn. Winding itself into useable black thread like magic.

What can be spun can be unspun.

It helps to visualize.

Their connection is static, fragments and fibers scattered across the landscape of their shared consciousness like the aftermath of a grenade. Eddie walks the infertile, intestate ground, seeking, gathering.

Wool-gathering, his other would have cackled. They love jokes like that.

As he works, gathering up handfuls that slide and slip, that cut his fingers until the strands are slick with mental blood, Eddie hums a tune. It’s wordless. Not Sinatra, or Bowie. Not yet, not now.

Not until they can sing together again.

Far away, he feels his other’s ear twitch, tickling against his wrist. In his mind he twists the bloodsoaked strands. Tucking in stray fibers, holding the thread as he spins, and spins, and spins.

It doesn’t have the lightness of true spinning. Eddie is no innocent princess. His other is no noble knight. The bond is heavy as hemp rope and just as thick, the nettle-sting of it scraping against Eddie’s callused fingers.

But Eddie is bull-strong, limbs lined with corded muscle. Born and shaped to carry weight. The weight of another mind. The weight of a love descended from distant stars.

 

**_I love you, Eddie._ **

 

Words stolen by fire, half-heard in a haze of pain and heat.

He braces, and pulls.

Hours pass, or only minutes. His ears burn with blood. His chest heaves. Sweat pours. Clothing clings. He ignores the now-alien itch of earthly fabrics against his skin. He twists, pulls.

 _Come back to me_.

The thread spirals out from Eddie’s hands. The dark forest closes around him, black tendrils taking the shapes of sharp trees. From an impossible distance, a wolf howls.

 

_“They won’t remember you. Won’t remember the joys you shared anymore than the pains. Won’t remember loving you.”_

_“I don’t care. I’ll spend the rest of our life telling them.”_

_“Very well. Give us a kiss then.”_

_“What?”_

_"Payment. A token. What can I say? I’m a traditionalist.”_

 

He bends over his other blind, folding to press his lips against slick-soft hide. Drops kisses like rainwater against unmoving mass. Whispers his grief and devotion in endless repetition, mouth moving in sacred circles.

_Wilt thou not waken and turn to me?_

His other whines high in their throat, soft and piteous.

He’s reached the point where the thread will slip, the stitch will drop, and he’ll be left with naught but bloody tufts of wool. Knocked down again and again, bruised and beaten. He’s shaking, hands clutching the dark thread, fingernails breaking, tearing.

_Please, please, please..._

The howl sounds again, closer now.

Something stirs in the black forest.

He’s lying prostrate with his lips pressed to his other’s skin. He’s staring fixed at his bloodied hands, stark against dark rope.

The rope-shadow cast by his hands slowly, slowly lengthens. Stretching unnaturally.

Eddie can’t breathe.

Dark, clawed fingers lace hesitantly between his own and tears burn Eddie’s eyes like acid.

Together, they spin.

It’s like drawing strands of egg from boiling water, like bringing up a surfacing diver. He breathes encouragement into their skin, calls them love, darling, beloved.

The wolfskin parts, bloodless, pulls him within.

Darkness and warmth, a mind unfurling around his like a black flower opening to the sun.

 

**_...where?_ **

_Here, with me. Us, together._

**_...tired._ **

_I know._

**_Who are you?_ **

_It doesn’t matter._

**_Feel good. Warm host. Safe. Good fit. Stay?_ **

_Always. I’ll stay with you always, love._

**_Who are we?_ **

_We’re Venom._

**_I like that._ **

_Me too._

**_Who are you?_ **

_Eddie. My name is Eddie._

**_Like that too._ **

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes on the text:
> 
> The surname "Brock" has its roots in the word for "badger" (appropriate for an aggressive character who frequently wears black and white). I knew this in part because I was a terrible Redwall nerd as a child. I went with a Scandinavian origin (which appears to be hopefully accurate) on the basis that Eddie (his Catholicism notwithstanding) would have blood/cultural ties to somebody like Loki. Especially since Loki is precisely the type of figure with which a wife might find herself bargaining to get back her husband.
> 
> I picked up some unrest in the fandom surrounding the idea that the symbiote had been more or less slotted into the role of comic book love interest (with a potential, disappointing dose of 'no homo' of course), but the more I rolled the idea around, the more I felt their dynamic really did fit very well with Type 425A. The heros of these types of tales are almost always women, the husband some sort of "monstrous creature", and the journey to reunite often hinges around the wife's ability to endure or perform impossible tasks (climbing glass mountains, washing blood from a shirt). There's usually an initial betrayal (like say, the issue with the psychotropic medication and the symbiote's instability), even [sometimes a theme of light being an ill omen, and darkness being good](https://writinginmargins.weebly.com/home/the-search-for-the-lost-husband) (as seen in iterations like Cupid and Psyche). I started thinking about the idea of the symbiote-as-dog (or wolf rather) and followed that towards the concept of curses. And the symbiote tends to be associated with threads and spiders, so linking it to the idea of spinning felt like a natural extension. *shrugs* This is mostly a thought exercise, I sincerely doubt anything to this effect will manifest in the current comics run, but it's been percolating in my head so I thought I'd share. Thank you for reading!


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